Drivers will need to focus more than ever at the job at hand after the country moves to alert level 2.
That's the message from the Automobile Association.
It could be up to six weeks since Kiwis last sat behind the steering wheel and it could take time for people to adjust to the change.
Traffic volumes should increase but it was impossible to say by how much, AA's principal adviser for infrastructure and motoring affairs Barney Irvine said.
"It's fair to say that traffic volumes will be a step up from where they are at the moment, but still some way short of where they'd be if we were in a normal environment," Irvine said.
"Taking a guess, we'd say that congestion levels under level 2 will probably be somewhere approaching what we'd see in one of the lighter non-holiday periods of the year, like late January."
Congestion had largely subsided during levels 4 and 3, with the commute to the Auckland CBD from Albany in the morning rush hour usually taking 40 minutes or more. At the moment, the journey only took around 10 minutes.
The road toll had been incredibly low during the lockdown period, with only nine deaths on New Zealand roads recorded in April, Irvine said.
It was the first time April's road toll had been in single digits since records began in 1965 and compared with an average of 32 deaths for the month over the past five years.
"Unfortunately, this will inevitably climb back up, but again it's impossible to say by how much," Irvine said.
"More traffic inevitably means more congestion and more accidents."
In the first week of level 3, traffic numbers were less than half the normal amount in the country's major city centres.
Auckland traffic had more than halved from the year before to midnight, Friday, May 1, by a whopping 54.6 per cent.
Wellington traffic dipped 61.2 per cent, with the most drastic change taking place in Christchurch where traffic was down more than 70 per cent on the year before.
Kiwis were told to remain at home as much as possible under level 4, with strict restrictions remaining in place after the lockdown.
However, there was an increase in traffic numbers after the country lowered its alert level on April 27.
Light traffic in Dunedin skyrocketed 108.5 per cent in the first week of level 3 from the week before when the country was in lockdown. Heavy traffic was up 100 per cent.
In the capital, there was a 132.4 per cent increase in heavy traffic, with light traffic ticking up more than 80 per cent.
It was a similar story in Auckland, where heavy traffic rose more than 90 per cent and light traffic increased more than 85 per cent than the last week of level 4.
Public transport use was predictably at an all-time low, dipping more than 90 per cent in Auckland from the year before, as of May 3.
However, it saw an uptick in the first week of level 3 compared to the previous week - leaping more than 90 per cent in Wellington.
The empty streets swiftly improved the air quality of the quietened cities, with scientists seeing a steep drop in nitrogen oxide in the first week of lockdown alone.
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Niwa air quality scientist Dr Ian Longley earlier told the Herald that the levels of nitrogen oxide in Auckland, found in pollutants from vehicle exhausts, had dipped.
"At the Takapuna monitoring site, close to the Northern Motorway, nitrogen oxide levels at the end of last week were about a third lower than that normally seen during the morning rush hour.
"For the remaining daylight hours, they were reduced by up to 80 per cent.
"Whether these reductions in air pollution are entirely due to the lockdown, or are merely reflecting fluctuations in the weather is not yet clear, but will become more obvious over the next couple of weeks."
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